Season's Greetings

This is one shot you'll have to click on to make it bigger so you can see the beautiful Bougainvilla blossoms behind and above the arbor. It's hard to make a scene seem wintery with Palm trees and flowers in December. The lights have to do it all alone.

The tower behind this arbor in the park is the Renaissance Vinoy Hotel. This is one of the most beautiful 5 star hotels in our area. Some rooms go for $2500 per night; but most rooms cost $395 per night.

The Vinoy was built in 1925 and was where the rich and famous spent their winters. In 1973, it closed in very poor condition. In 1990, work began to re-open the hotel. The work would cost $90,000,000 before it was re-opened in 1992.

The Vinoy Tower

I shot this image during the same meetup as the last photo I posted. Rather than showing the entire photo of The Renaissance Vinoy Hotel, I chose to show only the tower. People who have visited the area know this tower well, so there is no doubt where it was taken.

The beautiful cascading Bougainvilleas on the arbor was what initially attracted me to this site. It's the only place to find "Fall" color in this part of the country. I didn't want the scene to look tropical, but rather like the season. Hopefully, I've managed what I have envisioned. Fall in New England has always been my favorite time of year. From the photos my son sent me from CT the color this year was spectacular. It must be all the rain we've had all summer long.

This was made at around 10:00 am and the sun was pretty strong. I had to be careful of extreme contrasts while not blowing out the whites. I chose F11 to get plenty of Depth of Field (DOF) at 1/320th second because even though my lens is Image Stabilized (IS), I wanted to be sure there was no evident camera shake. I used Aperture Priority mode with pattern metering at ISO 200 and a 55mm focal length with my favorite walk-around lens, a Canon 55-250mm IS lens.